Our failure to mobilize sufficient effort to fight climate change reflects a combination of political and economic forces, on both the national and the global level. To state the problem in its simplest terms, writes Joseph Aldy, future, unborn generations would enjoy the benefits of policies to reduce carbon emissions whereas the current…

Jeffrey Passel surveys demographic trends and projections in the U.S. youth population, with an emphasis on trends among immigrant youth. He traces shifts in the youth population over the past hundred years, examines population projections through 2050, and offers some observations about the likely impact of the immigrant youth population on…

The children from immigrant families in the United States make up a historically diverse population, and they are demonstrating just as much diversity in their experiences in the K-12 educational system. Robert Crosnoe and Ruth Lopez Turley summarize these K-12 patterns, paying special attention to differences in academic functioning across…

Now that some of the historic barriers to economic success for U.S. women and minorities have begun to fall, women and blacks, in particular, are moving upward on the nation's socioeconomic ladder. Melissa Kearney reviews evidence that improved economic opportunities for these two groups make sex and race less important than they once were in…

Although education pays off handsomely in the United States, children from low-income families attain less education than children from more advantaged families. In this article, Cecilia Elena Rouse and Lisa Barrow investigate why family background is so strongly linked to education. The authors show that family socioeconomic status affects such…